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How to Cut Marketing Costs without Endangering Business
Growth
As business owners and/or marketers, we're all under pressure
to cut costs. Unfortunately, many business owners get so intent
on reducing costs, they lose sight of what it's going to do to
the business. It's hard to grow - or even survive - if you
don't have any customers.
Reducing marketing costs without screwing up your ability to
grow is easier than you might think.
Here are five ways to do that.
1. Eliminate waste
Over the years I've looked at hundreds of marketing programs,
and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some
kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads
to be lost.
Before you cut anything, take a good hard look at what you're
doing. Are there programs that aren't delivering the results
you anticipated? Fix them or get rid of them.
Is there anything that can't be traced to increasing sales
opportunities? Unless you have a pile of extra money, now is
not the time to be spending money on marketing efforts that
don't generate more leads or develop the ones you have.
2. Make fewer mistakes
Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what
they're doing.
Marketing - which has never been exactly simple - has changed a
lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in
charge now, and they're looking for you online. If you're not
on the internet, you're not in the game.
While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out
for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to
mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.
You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you
don't have one somewhere on your team you're probably wasting
money.
3. Nurture what you've got
Successful lead generation programs bring in people in
different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to
commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a
sales person and some aren't.
Think of any lead generation activity you've ever done: search
marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade
shows - it doesn't matter. Were all of the people who responded
ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course
not.
But that doesn't make those people any less likely to buy from
you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with
them.
If you're one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive
prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be
better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones.
And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating
them in the first place.
4. Increase conversions - not just inbound leads or traffic
This point is similar to the one above it, but it's important
enough to look at from a different angle.
Let's say you have 2000 visitors a month going to your website
and 60% of them leave your homepage without going anywhere
else. Which do you think would be cheaper, changing your
website so that an additional 20% (400 visitors) stay on your
site or doubling traffic to the site? The results are the
same.
(Hint: if you picked the first option, you're right).
Complex purchases - such as technology, high ticket goods, and
on-going services - are made up of many different conversion
points where the buyer decides whether or not to spend any more
time with you. Each of those conversion points can be tweaked
to pass more prospects through and provide a better return on
your investment.
5. Consider outsourcing
To have a successful marketing program today requires skills in
multiple disciplines - some of which didn't even exist a decade
or so ago. For example, you need:
Website strategy and development, search engine optimization,
paid search marketing, prospect conversion optimization, lead
nurturing and web marketing - just to name a few.
Staffing an in-house team with all of this expertise would cost
more than most small to mid-sized businesses are willing or
able to invest. Yet you can easily - and cost effectively - get
this expertise from an outside firm or group of
individuals.
I highly suggest using LocaAdLink. It's an amazing "Bang for your
Buck" in terms of return on invstment.
Why spend hundreds of doallars on Google Adwords and Pay per
Click when you can achieve the same results for a set price of
$99.95 per month or REALLY go after it for $199.95 per month.
This program works so well, I use it myself.
Not only that, but by paying 1 year in advance, I saved 15%.
That's a full year of high profile ad listing, complete with
Google sponsored links, backlinks from over 980,000 other
subscribers and all for the cost of a 1 month of YellowPages
ad.
I'm telling you.... This allows you to Cut Marketing Costs
without Endangering Business Growth
It's worth looking into. Call us today
619-226-2877
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